Since 1969, spaceflight has transitioned from a government-run program to a highly profitable industry. The Apollo missions may have been justified by national pride and glory, but they were really all about the nuclear arms race; if you can build a moon rocket you can build very large and precise missiles.

In 2014, our smartphone signals, internet connections, and GPS would not work without the multi-billion dollar infrastructure in Earth orbit. Most satellites don’t need to be subsidized, they are quite profitable on their own. Yet we haven’t seen a lot of manned exploration outside of low Earth orbit, because it isn’t yet profitable.